


The children inside the palace walls

by TheDameintheRaininMaine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, all of robert's bastard kids were raised in the palace, attempts at arranged marriages, bastard prince gendry au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29475285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDameintheRaininMaine/pseuds/TheDameintheRaininMaine
Summary: Arya doesn't want to leave Winterfell to live in the Red Keep. But at least she potentially has a couple of new friends to make her time more interesting.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Bella, Arya Stark & Mya Stone, Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 19
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The whole fic is inspired by this great piece of fanart- https://bookedandbusythough.tumblr.com/post/190601582276 (originally posted by Oatmealraisinbagel)

Arya hadn’t been terribly excited for the King’s caravan to make it to Winterfell. 

Curious to be sure. She’d never met the king before. But it also meant she’d been wrestled into a dress, forced to stand still and smile and be quiet. 

She watched the royal family disembark while fighting the urge to fidget. The fat king passes her over with barely a glance, and his queen’s face reminds her of Sansa’s whenever she had finally found the sheep’s dung in her bed. Their children hold Arya’s attention even less so, the oldest looking just as odious as his mother, his face pinched as though everything in Winterfell was offensive to him. 

And already, Sansa seems taken with him, her smile turning girlish and giggling as soon as she curtsies and calls him “your grace”. As soon as Arya sees an opening, she wanders.

Even the Queen’s brothers aren’t interesting- Jamie Lannister looks nearly as perfectly golden and perfectly odious as his twin. And despite her curiosity about the Imp, Arya quickly realizes he’s no more intriguing than any other man, just smaller.

There’s a another group standing near the back of the wheelhouse, surrounded by servants and the king’s men, but not rushing about to unload things or begin any other work. Two girls and a boy. They all look close to Jon and Robb’s age, give or take a year. All three are quite tall, with black hair. 

“Arya!” a voice yell, before pulling her back into line with her family, and she says nothing about the others. 

She doesn’t see them again until the feast. They are seated away from the dais, just like Jon, because Mother won’t allow him to sit with the family.

The boy (a bit younger than Jon, perhaps from his face, but even taller) is sitting hunched, chewing sullenly. Arya passes him by. The younger girl is all smiles and bouncing curls, but the older one wears her hair shorter than most ladies would. Arya squints, trying to see better how they’re dressed, when she’s distracted by Sansa giggling over the prince. 

Ugh. Arya reaches for her spoon.

Later, after she’s crept back after being taken off to bed by Robb, Arya searches until she finds Jon and pesters him for answers. 

He doesn’t want to talk at first, but Arya knows she can get him to tell. 

“They’re the King’s bastard children,” Jon finally admits. Arya blinks. 

“He brought them to court with him?” Even at nine, she knows this is unusual. She’s heard whispers enough about Jon, how Father has kept him close to his side, educated with his trueborn children. And three seems like a lot of bastards to have, even though Arya’s heard Ned’s stories that Robert was always popular with women. Having seen him, she can’t understand why.

Jon nods. 

“The eldest is Mya. You should invite her to go riding tomorrow. I think you two would get along.”

And with that, Jon ruffles her hair and turns to leave.

It’s easy enough to follow his suggestion though. During the royal family’s visit, Septa Mordane has backed off on lessons a bit, and Arya has the morning free. 

She’s grateful. That morning’s lesson was to be singing.

Mya’s sitting with the others, and when breakfast is finished, Arya approaches her. She thinks maybe she ought to have been nervous, but she just blurts out the invitation as she usually would to anyone else. 

Thankfully, Mya agrees readily. That makes Arya happy, that she didn’t brush her off like a gnat because she’s so young.

“I go riding every chance I get in King’s Landing,” Mya tells her as she leads her to the stables, “It’s my favorite thing about living there. I even liked having to ride most of the way north.”

“Are you actually from King’s Landing?” Arya asks, remembering the story that the city is so crowded it constantly smells of shit. 

“My mother’s from the Vale. She still lives there.”

That makes Arya’s foot catch. So her mother doesn’t live at the Red Keep with her. Though, she reasons, Mya looks practically like a woman grown, maybe living away from her mother doesn’t bother her.

Mya shakes her head. She’s much too big for a pony like Arya’s, so she tells her she can borrow Sansa’s mare, since she never goes riding anyway. 

“She doesn’t like riding?”

“Sansa doesn’t like anything fun. She hates getting dirty. She only likes sewing and dancing and other stupid things.”

Mya had nodded slightly. They were starting off at a gentle trot around the yard, no matter how much Arya longed to go out into the Wolfswood. 

“Bella and I get lessons in those things too. She’s much better at them than me.”

Well, at least it wasn’t just Arya who was a hopeless lady. She urges her pony to slow down. 

“Bella’s your other sister?”

Mya nods. 

“I’m six and ten, Bella’s five and ten and Gendry’s four and ten.”

Gendry, Arya tucks the name away. 

“And King Robert brought you all to live in the Red Keep, even though you’re bastards?”

Mya winces a little, but Arya hadn’t wanted to mince words. She knew how much Jon hated that word, but she hates euphemisms more. 

She shakes her head a bit before answering. 

“I remember him coming around a bit when I was little, before he was the king. Mum said he kept coming around to see me long after he lost interest in her. That’s...something, I guess. Bella came a few years later, and Gendry maybe a year or two after that. Even though it’s been nearly ten years since he came, he still doesn’t act like he’s used to it”

Arya frowns and changes the subject. 

“You rode the whole way from King’s Landing? Will you do the same going back?”

Mya nods, and picks up her mare into a trot. 

“Bella got tired really easily, and Gendry was grouchy the whole way, but I thought it was amazing to see everything from horseback.”

Jon had been right. Mya was easy, even if Arya thought she was a bit old to be a proper friend.

Bella ended up being easy too, but for an entirely different reason.

It’s the next time that Arya finds herself forced into an embroidery lesson. She’s late of course, and doesn’t notice at first that Bella’s sitting away from the others. Myrcella’s in their lesson today, and Sansa, Jeyne and Beth are all so busy fawning over her that even Arya’s late entrance isn’t noticed by anyone but Septa Mordane, who thankfully only gives her a glare rather than a lecture. 

Halfway through the lesson when Arya’s trying to undo a knotted string, she sees turn Jeyne head toward Bella and giggle. The anger flares up within her without any explanation, she doesn’t need it. 

“Did they say something to you?” she shout-whispers to her. It’s not Bella’s embroidery, she imagines. It’s impeccable, much less embarrassing than her own.

Bella makes a face. 

“I tried to sit with them when I came in, and your sister and one of her friends started laughing. By the time Myrcella came in I was too embarrassed to sit anywhere near them.”

Arya can feel her face burning when Bella continues. 

“I think they must have heard one of the adults...or Joffrey, saying something about my mother being a whore.”

Arya’s nostrils flare. That does sound like Sansa, whoever Bella’s mother was, Arya didn’t think it was any of Sansa’s concern, much less Jeyne and the others, especially if Bella hadn’t brought it up. And bringing up rude details about someone without their permission sounds exactly what Arya already thinks about Joffrey.

“Stick behind with me once we’re done, and you can help me sheep shift her bed in revenge.”

Arya dares not say anything else during the lesson, but when they are dismissed she grabs Bella by the hand and drags her off to the sheep pens.

Bella holds herself back when Arya retrieves her sample and carries it in a wooden bucket back towards the family’s quarters. 

“So how long have you lived in the Red Keep?” Arya asks as she flips over Sansa’s mattress and tears open the seam that had been sewed up since her last trip. Bella’s watching the door.

“A man came and found me when I was five or six. He talked to my mother for a bit, and she said I had to go. Said it would be better for me.”

Arya raises an eyebrow. 

‘Has it been?”

Bella shrugs. 

“We eat whenever we’re hungry and the rain never blows our roof in and nobody ever tries to buy you...I’ll take it.”

Arya doesn’t understand parts of what Bella said, but she finishes basting up the hole in the mattress before flipping it back over. 

“Do you do this all the time?” Bella asks her, looking at her movements dubiously. 

“Only when Sansa makes me extra angry,” Arya replies, neatening up the furs so the change won’t be too noticeable.

“I think it’s been long enough since I did this last time it’ll take her a nice long time to remember and figure out where the smell is coming from ,” Arya says with satisfaction. While they move to stash the bucket, and henceforth, the evidence, she tells Bella.

“Sorry my sister’s so mean. I think she’s just that way, it’s not you. Her and Jeyne started calling me horseface a while back.”

Bella wrinkles her nose. 

“You don’t look like a horse.”

“They just mean it as shorthand for ugly.”

She pauses a minute before continuing. 

“Are the King’s other children mean too?”

Bella makes sort of an odd face. 

“The Queen prefers we don’t spend too much time with them...but the youngest two are nice enough. Tommen spends most of his days playing with his kittens, and Myrcella has a little garden.”

She’s not mentioning Joffrey, pointedly. But Arya doesn’t want to talk about him anyway, she would much rather skip off and play monsters-and-maidens with Mycah.

And maybe Bella won’t sneak her sword lessons or archery practice, but if Sansa and her friends were already fond of making of her, then Arya thought they would get on just fine.

The days go on, and it is announced that Arya and Sansa will leave for King’s Landing with Ned, with Mother and Bran joining them in perhaps a year. 

Arya is upset, and she expresses this by being even more disagreeable than she normally would be. Septa Mordane tells Mother one day that she could count on the fingers of one hand the number of lessons that Arya hadn’t avoided and left instead to chase Nymeria or spy on the boy’s lessons, or play come-into-my-castle with the servant’s children. 

Mother had sighed, trying to force a comb through her messy hair, and muttering about how King’s Landing would give her some refinement, instead of her spending all of her time with lowborns and bastards. 

Arya didn’t understand Mother’s problems with the lowborns and bastards. They were much better company than her own sister.

These expectations would have been bad enough, but the move is apparently also because Sansa is supposed to marry Joffrey, and seven hells, she will not shut up about him, and Arya spends much time avoiding having to listen to her fawning.

Her outlook is brightened only by Jon’s gift to her, the day before he leaves to join the Night’s Watch, that she dubs Needle. 

The morning that they’re supposed to leave, she sneaks into one of the back courtyards, one that’s mostly only used for storage because it’s shadowed by the back of the library tower. Needle is smuggled out wrapped in burlap, and she withdraws it, brandishing it inelegantly in a form she’s only vaguely seen Bran practice. It feels solid in her hand, obviously real steel. She wonders what Jon told Mikken when he had it made.

“You’re form’s not right,” Arya hears from behind her and jumps. It’s the older boy who had come with Mya and Bella- Gendry, Mya had said his name was. He’s taller than both of them, but with the same thick black hair and blue eyes. He’s dressed to leave, his hands in his pockets. Arya feels a flash of anger. 

“And I suppose you could do it better?”

Gendry scoffs slightly, his posture dropping even lower. 

“Not reallym, no. I’m no good with a sword. “

Arya wrinkles her nose. If they were being cared for in the Red Keep, surely the king wanted him to be trained to fight. 

“Then what do you use?”

Gendry shrugs again. He looks sort of embarrassed. 

“The master-at-arms suggested I could try an axe or a warhammer instead.”

Arya scoffs.

“An axe or a warhammer? You’re huge already, pick up one of those and I could hit you blindfolded with a kitchen knife!”

“You could not hit me, I’m twice you’re size.”

Arya huffs. He is not twice her size. He’s big, bigger than Jon, but he’s not a giant from a story or something, he’s still obviously just a boy on the cusp of manhood. She could hit him easily, if he gave her cause. 

Gendry appears to have chosen to change the subject.

“Do the others know you play with swords?”

“I’m not playing,” she insists. Why was she always the one “playing with swords”, but Bran was practicing and Robb was training?

“Got a lot of people you want to poke full of holes then?”

Arya huffs again. Maybe not. She fought with Sansa often enough, but not usually to the point of actually wanting to stab her. 

“No, but I’d like to be able to do it if I did want to stab someone. Wouldn’t you?”

Gendry’s face shifts, and Arya wonders if he has anyone he ever wanted to stab. Mya hadn’t said where he had come from before the Red Keep.

Her concern disappears when suddenly she has the image of Mother or Septa Mordane finding her with Needle and it being taken away, and her chest goes tight. Jon’s already gone away, that was enough. 

Her face must betray her thoughts, because Gendry’s face softens a bit. 

“I won’t tell, if that’s what your worried about.”

Arya’s heart soars. 

“You won’t?”

“Well you’ll be living in the castle with us, and I’d rather not have to live in the same castle as someone who wants to poke me full of holes.”

Arya softens. Maybe he’s not as stupid as she first thought when he said he was hopeless with a sword. She wraps Needle back up in the burlap and hides it under the skirt of her kirtle Then she turns and her and Gendry begin to walk back towards the rest of the keep. 

She watches Gendry’s back. Despite his first words, he hasn’t been teasing her or cutting her down. She wonders if she could ask him to show her some of the forms he’d learned in the castle. Maybe he would. Bran sometimes did, but recently had started saying he shouldn’t, because she was a girl. Gendry was a bastard, treated like he had to be some way because of something he was that he couldn’t help either. Maybe he would understand, Jon sort of did after all. She’d always heard people say that Arya Underfoot could make friends out of a rock, maybe it was true. 

They are interrupted by the padding of fur-covered paws and panting of Nymeria bounding out to meet them. She’s getting big as fast as her littermates and is now the size of a large snow dog. 

“Nymeria,” Arya chides her, pushing one hand against her head above her eyes, “You’re supposed to be with the others in the Godswood. They won’t let me bring you if you get in trouble.”

Arya knew that direwolves weren’t pets, but she still felt her chest go tight at the idea of leaving her behind.

Nymeria’s turned away, and is sitting up on her haunches and ignoring Arya’s words when she twists and sees Gendry staring. 

“Why’s your dog so huge?”

Arya makes a face. Maybe her first assessment was correct. 

“She’s a direwolf, stupid!”

Gendry might take some work, she thinks. 

Neither of them can see up on one of the walkways, where both of their fathers can just make out their figures on the ground. 

“I’m telling you Ned,” King Robert began, his eyes staring far off as if into the past. “Your children will have a ball in the Red Keep. All of mine are well cared for.”

His eyes train on the small figures of Arya and Gendry. 

“And you should continue to consider my other offer. Join our houses, once or twice. They could have what Lyanna and I were supposed to.”

Ned watches below, as Gendry reaches out one hand to try and pet Nymeria, and falls straight on his backside as she extends her tongue to lick him. Arya laughs herself sick beside him, and Ned imagines he can hear her laugh, high and free, even from this far away. 

Despite this, he knows his friend’s wish is not born out of altruism, or love of his children, natural or otherwise. He’d seen him completely dismiss his younger daughter on the first day of his visit, she held no interest for him then. And he knows exactly how Arya would react to an unexpected betrothal, any of them, especially one if she discovered it was based entirely on how she looked. Ned’s heart pulls in his chest. She’s only nine years old. Sansa may not have been much older, but at least she was old enough to have even the smallest interest in getting married.

And so he reaches for the easiest way to deflect. 

“Catelyn would never agree to betrothing Arya to a bastard, royal or otherwise.”

King Robert chuckles, almost without mirth.

“Never would have I thought you a man to be cowed by his wife Ned.”

Ned does not respond to the goading, and Robert continues. 

“She’ll be at the Red Keep either way. Give it time, perhaps she’ll even come to want it for herself.”

Ned watches Arya and Gendry below. She’s helped him up, and he’s rubbing his bruised backside and looking embarrassed. He does think that they could come to be friends, in time. But he still does not have great confidence in Robert’s words.

Arya stashes Needle in her things, then finishes up her packing and joins the others where they’re gathering to leave. She hugs Mother and Robb and Bran and Rickon and even gives a token promise to behave.

She saddles her pony, and looks around. She was planning to ride with Father, but spots Mya off to one side, and pulls the reins to follow after her.

“Arya, really?” she hears. Arya snaps her head around, finds Sansa, sitting awkwardly, uncomfortable on her own saddle. 

“We’re going to be living in a palace, with the whole royal family, and you still want to spend all your time around bastards?”

Arya’s anger flares up anew. She knows Sansa means it to be mean.

“Don’t call them that, they have names you know!” Mya’s sitting upright in her saddle, Bella and Gendry behind. Gendry looks almost as awkward in a saddle as Sansa does. “And besides, they’re my friends”.

Sansa shakes her head, Now she’s prattling on about maybe being invited to ride in the wheelhouse one of these days. Arya ignores her, and in the corner of her eyes, sees Lady trailing after Sansa’s horse. She turns her attention back to Gendry, Mya and Bella. They’re the kings children, she thinks, and they aren’t even allowed in the wheelhouse. She glances off to where it sits, all two stories, pulled by forty horses. All for just three people.

Not that she would want to be in there with the queen anyway. 

Arya pulls on her pony’s reins, and walks her to join the others.


	2. Chapter 2

Arya at least wasn’t bored during the trip to King’s Landing. Every step of the road seemed to have something new to investigate, and new places to explore and the whole of the caravan had so many people to talk to. Arya didn’t even think to complain about how long the trip took, even though she could see Father growing frustrated with the King every time he insisted on stopping to hunt. 

When they’re crossing through the Neck, Arya mistakenly discovers the poison kisses. Despite the itching, she still thinks the flowers were pretty, and she doesn’t completely regret picking them. The next day, while she’s waiting for the rash to heal, Mya entertains her with stories about where she’s from in the Vale.

“That’s where my aunt Lysa is from,” Arya tells her, “I’ve never met her, and never been there though.”

“It’s great,” Mya says, “There are mountains so high that in harsh winters, they are completely impassable. My mum was the daughter of a mule breeder, they were better than horses for the craggy terrain, stronger, more sure-footed, and if they thought something was dangerous no rider would be able to make them move a hoof. Clans of mountain men live high up…”

And Arya listens to every word. 

Bella hadn’t had too many stories about growing up in the Riverlands, just her vague memories of her own mother, and the other ladies who worked where she did. 

“I mostly remember bright colored dresses, and lots of noise. All of the women wore sweet perfume, the whole place smelled of flowers, even if there weren’t any people in it....

Her eyes go distant at the memory. 

“I miss my mum, I missed her badly at first, but she had insisted that it would be better for me to go to King’s Landing, that I would safe and provided for, so I did.”

And she is grateful for Arya’s tips on how to ride for a long time without getting tired.

Gendry had proved more elusive. The day that Sansa had been gushing about them being invited to join the Queen in the wheelhouse, she had been hoping that she could find him while they had stopped.

She shakes her head when she sees Lady after her and Sansa part ways. Sometimes she wonders if Sansa remembers what she is. And what she said was true, the Queen would never allow a direwolf to ride in the wheelhouse, she doesn’t even let her servants do that.

She finds Gendry sitting by himself. He always seems to be by himself when he’s not with his sisters. Didn’t he have friends?

“Gendry!” she calls out as she approaches, He reacts to her voice, but looks alarmed at it. She holds out the two long sticks, broken handles of brooms from the look of them.. 

“You said before you’d had proper sword-fighting lessons. Show me!”

He gives her an exasperated look, but takes one stick and stands. He’s not as easy to goad as Jon, but he shows her a few stances, and shows her how to hold them to swing and parry and lunge. 

It only goes on for a bit, Arya’s barely even broken a sweat when he smacks her just above the elbow.

“Beat it,” he tells her, “I’m not going to get caught trying to hit you with a stick.”

Arya pouts a little, but moves on. He didn’t tell her no immediately, so she can always try again another day. 

She finds Mycah easily enough. He’s always up for a fake fight. 

Arya tries to show him the same forms Gendry did. When they start trading hits back and forth, Arya can feel the difference. Mycah is taller than her though, and he gets an edge quickly. She realizes easily that if she ever hopes to be able to beat him, she’ll have to get faster, have to be-

Then she hears Joffrey’s voice behind her and her mood turns instantly. 

Everything after that is a rush. A rush of anger and rashness and then deep, deep fear. If pressed, she wouldn’t be able to describe exactly what it was that made her first strike Joffrey (it was anger, it always was, that Joffrey drunk as a lout, thought to terrorize someone just because he could) or why she threw his sword into the water. 

By the time she runs, with Sansa’s high-pitched, squalling voice behind her, she can’t even be proud that she got Joffrey’s sword away from him. All she feels is fear. 

Fear that continues to build in Arya’s gut as the day turns into night, turns into day again, and then all over again. She wonders what will happen, if the searching men would find her, or if she would just live in these woods for the rest of her life. Nymeria sticking by her side is the only thing keeping her from panic. She strokes her neck, free of the mud she’d brushed from it earlier that day. 

Jory does find her eventually, and oh, Arya is so glad that it’s Jory and not anyone else. Gendry is with him as well. Part of her wants to run again, but she’s too tired. Tired and hungry and scared still.

“Your father’s worried sick,” Jory says, as he takes the lead and Arya and Gendry follow. 

“Did Nymeria hurt Joffrey badly?” Arya asks Gendry, in a small voice. 

“No, she just bit his arm, it’s all bandaged,” Gendry replies, “He’s certainly acting like she did though. Way he’s been talking you’d think she tried to bite his head off.”

Arya wishes she had. Then she freezes, and looks to Nymeria, who’s padding on the path beside them. 

“We have to make her go away,” she says hoarsely, “They’ll blame her.”

“They’ll blame you,” Gendry tells her, “Joffrey won’t shut his mouth.”

Arya’s stomach is turning in knots as she watches Nymeria. 

“I can defend myself though, she can’t.” and her voice trailing off, Arya picks up a rock. 

It takes too many rocks, and too much yelling. Jory and Gendry both agree that they won’t speak a word of this to anyone. 

The rest of the way back to camp, Arya’s voice is hoarse from yelling. Jory leads, and Gendry walks closer to her than he had before. 

“Heard you gave Joffrey a good whack to his empty skull before you ran off,” Gendry whispers to her. 

Arya feels her lips twist into a perverse grin. 

“I did.”

“Good,” Gendry tells her, and Arya feels a little flicker of happiness. 

It doesn’t last long. She hears Jory swear under his breathe when they approach the gate, and even Arya can see it’s the Queen’s men guarding it. One of them grabs her, and Arya feels herself begin to cry from the fear that’s come back. 

Just out of the corner of one eye, she sees Gendry rushed by his sisters. She can’t hear what he says to either of them, but they both rush off, and no one notices to stop them. 

Being brought before the king brings up amost every emotion Arya has ever felt, one after another. Fear to start, anger at Joffrey’s words, a flicker of hope that Sansa will speak up, and indigent anger when she lies, then more righteous anger returns when the Queen passes sentence on Lady. 

Because that isn’t right. As mad as she is at Sansa, Lady wasn’t there, wasn’t involved at all, doesn’t deserve even the tiniest bit of punishment. 

And off to one side, beside his uncle Renly, she sees Gendry’s face. And he looks like he expected this. 

But all of this is washed away, even the small fear of her own punishment coming from Father, by the news about Mycah, cut down by the Hound as if he were a boar.

She can’t even feel happy when she hears that Lady had broken her chain and run off into the woods before either Father or the Queen could have her executed. 

Even with this turn of events, Sansa won’t speak a word to Arya, and she’s not too upset about that. She doesn’t want to speak to her anyway, not after Mycah. It’s not even a week before Sansa’s back to fawning around Joffrey as if nothing had happened. She hardly even seems to notice the absence of her wolf, while Arya still feels Nymeria’s absence deeply. 

Arya’s sitting by herself just outside their camp one day, when a shadow falls over her eyes. 

Gendry sits to her right, Mya and Bella to her left. There’s no one else around, which must be why they chose to speak to her now. 

“We were sorry to hear about the butcher’s boy,” Mya says. 

Arya blinks, and looks at Mya’s face, flat and serene. 

“You knew?” she says, “You knew she would have the Hound ride him down?”

It’s Bella who answers. 

“If he hadn’t run too...he’d have been dead before the hour was up. The Queen was in a state...well I won’t say I’ve never seen her like that before...”

Gendry’s face is impassive, but in a defeated manner. Like he’s seen this before. 

“You were right in the forest,” he tells her, “They would have blamed Nymeria. No matter how fierce a direwolf could be, the Queen would be wearing her fur, for the sake of her son’s bloodied arm. And we would all be fools if we thought that she wouldn’t have considered any direwolf good enough for the blood she demanded.”

Arya is slightly astonished, considering his words.

“You-”

“There was only one guard by the gatehouse,” Bella says, “Easy enough to distract.”

“The chain was old too,” Mya adds, “I barely even needed a stake to break it. And you knew Lady, quiet and polite. No one saw her run off.”

Arya likes that image. Gentle, good natured Lady, running in the woods, the tattered remains of the chain around her neck. Maybe she would find Nymeria and they would prowl the Riverlands together. They were sisters after all. 

But still…

“But you couldn’t do anything for Mycah?” Arya asks, bitterness dripping from her words.

Mya and Bella both shake their heads, and Gendry lets his fall, so he can’t meet her eye. 

“Lady’s a beast,” Mya explains, “And even King Robert, the great hunter, wouldn’t be able to hunt a single beast in a forest, especially one this size. Mycah was a boy, and a butcher’s son...the search parties wouldn’t have come back until they found him….and since he ran too….”

Arya knows this. She hadn’t realized Mycah had run away like her at first. She’s glad he did, though she also knows his last days must have been terrifying. 

“If he had been found by anyone but the Hound…it would have only delayed the inevitable” Bella says, then trails off. Arya’s stomach burns again. She will take that over the despair. 

“You need to be careful,” Gendry says, his voice cracking, “After Lady….”

“The Queen still thinks your father must have pulled something,” Mya continues, “Even though he called for his sword, even though he didn’t leave the King’s audience before Lady’s broken chain was discovered, she still thinks he was responsible.”

The rage boils deep in Arya. And Sansa still so admires the Queen…

Bella and Mya both stand, and pat Arya on the shoulders before leaving. Gendry stays where he is sitting. He is quiet for a time, and Arya appreciates that. 

After a while, 

“A few years ago, when I was ten maybe...all of us had already been living in the Red Keep for a while...I had a crush on one of the girls who worked in the kitchen, her name was Elinor and she always brought us our breakfast.”

Arya frowns. This sounds like one of Sansa’s stories to tell the truth, and the anger is still welling in her chest, but she stays quiet and lets him talk. His face is hard, harder than she’s ever seen on Jon or Robb.

“Joffrey found out, and told his mother that she had tried to kiss him, and probably me too. She was...only three and ten or four and ten at most. And I was still just a boy, so it was never anything serious like that. I brought her a flower from one of the gardens a couple of times…”

So Joffrey was always a liar, is what Arya takes from this story. 

“The Queen had her whipped, and then dismissed her. Even though what Joffrey said wasn’t true, and I told her it wasn’t true…I don’t know what happened to her after that.”

Arya blinks. Of course the Queen would take her own son’s word as gospel and ignore anything to the contrary. She just had the week before, Arya had seen it with her own eyes.

“What did the King say?” Arya asks, though she can tell it’s a slim hope. 

“Nothing at all. He was on a hunting trip when it happened. I think she said something about me obviously being his son, already chasing after girls. He didn’t say a damn thing about Joffrey or Elinor.”

“Sounds about right,” Arya says, her voice low. King Robert may not have let the Queen punish her as she wanted, but he also clearly only wanted the whole deal done with so he didn’t have to handle it anymore. 

“The point is,” Gendry continues, “That I told the truth, that was what I could do, and it didn’t matter. The Queen did what she wanted anyway. You can’t blame yourself for Mycah. Joffrey was always going to lie.”

“He was my friend,” Arya says, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, “We used to play games together all the time back at Winterfell. I played with lots of the servants children. And now he’s dead, and no one cares but me and his father. And his father can’t even say anything, because he’s too scare of earning the Queen’s ire.”

“I’ve never even bothered trying to befriend any of the servants since then,” Gendry tells her, bitterness evident. “Only reason I can think of that Joffrey did it was because he knew it would hurt me and he considerd Elinor no more imporant that a fly he could pull the wings from.”

Arya pulls her knees up to her chest. 

“And he’s going to be king someday.”

Gendry shakes his head. 

“I figure I’d warn you the best you can probably do is just steer clear of Joffrey as much as you can-”

He claps her on the shoulder, much in a manner Jon would have. 

“And to tell you again that there was nothing you could do about Mycah. It took me a long time to stop thinking I could have done something about Elinor. Mya and Bella too- they blamed themselves because they thought the only reason Joffrey even found out was because they teased me about her so much…”

Arya stares off to where the road continues, outside the camp. Everyone said they would reach the Red Keep in one or two weeks time, barring anymore hiccups. She’s never seen the Red Keep, and something tells her that the stories she’s heard won’t help. 

“Is that all we have to look forward to?” she asks Gendry, “Spending all our time in a castle avoiding Joffrey?”

“It’s not that hard, thankfully,” Gendry assures her, “You’re a girl, so you won’t even share any lessons with him.”

Arya rolls her eyes, though she is grateful for that. 

“And the castle is huge, and full of places to hide and explore. You could probably spend all your time there and never have to see him at all.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Arya pauses before the next question. 

“What about the rest of King’s Landing.”

Gendry takes a deep breath. 

“Stinks. Literally, it smells of shit almost all the time. It’s terribly crowded, especially in Flea Bottom. That’s- that’s where I was born.”

Arya tilts her head at him. 

“Who was your mum?”

“She worked in a tavern, had yellow hair, she liked to sing.”

Arya thinks Gendry must favor Robert. Mya and Bella certainly seem to. If his mother was fair, than nothing of her seems to have touched him. 

“Do you still get to see her?”

Gendry sucks in a long breath, before answering. 

“Not in a while.”

Arya can’t imagine that. She already misses her mother and her brothers and they’ve only been gone a few weeks. 

“That sounds awful.”

Gendry shrugs. 

“I was born in a gutter, and now I live in a castle. I get good food and clean clothes and an education no one born in Flea Bottom could ever hope for. It’s strange though. All of us know we’re at court, but we don’t belong. We’re the King’s children, but we will never inherit, and none of us really know where our futures will lead. Sometimes I think I would be better off if went back to that gutter.”

“That’s stupid,” Arya blurts out. She sympathizes, and she certainly knows what it’s like to feel like she doesn’t fit in. She remembers years ago, when she had asked Jon if it was possible she was also a bastard like him. But still, it’s a stupid thing to say. 

“So you got lucky. Not everyone does. I say enjoy what you can. At least you get sword fighting lessons. If you ever end up back in that gutter, at least no one will pick fights with you after that.”

That actually makes Gendry laugh and Arya feels a rush of pride seeing the laugh reach his eyes. 

She stands, hearing the bell for dinner. She’s on her best behavior for Father, and Sansa’s still not speaking to her. She spends her time trying to imagine what the Red Keep, what all of King’s Landing must be like. 

And at night, she feels Needle where she has it packed, and tries not to imagine slicing Joffrey’s pretty neck with it.


End file.
